Staying tuned, and looking forwards to what you end up having in mind...

There are Times, Sir, when men of good Conscience cannot blindly follow orders. You acknowledge their sentience, but ignore their personal liberties and freedoms. Order a man to hand over his child to the state? Not while I"m captain.
- J.L.Picard.

I went to the hobbystore today and got some 5/16" and 1/4" O.D. aluminum tubing to replace the plastic nozzles at the ends of the nacelles. The 1/4" tubing will slip inside the 5/16" tubing so I will have to cut one narrow section of 5/16" for the first ring and then a longer section at an angle for the nozzle itself with a small gap in between where the groove is in the kit plastic. Both sections will slide on over the 1/4" tubing.

I also bought two colors of ModelMaster enamel in the jar for the top and bottom of the hull and wings.

And I've pretty much made up my mind to drill out the windows so I got four extra size 80 bits to drill holes for fiber optic strands.
If I get all the holes drilled without breaking at least one or two bits it will be miracle!
To that end I made copies of the decal sheets on the office copier so I can cut out the bow windows and tape them to the model for use in where to locate the holes. I also noticed the decal sheet includes two options (all lit and some lit) for decals onthe bow windows so I could also apply one set of decals for use in drilling out windows (which would probably destroy them) then sand those off and apply the other set once the model is all done and painted.

Still need to figure out how I'm going to get power into this bird; ideally it will be some type of power plug and jack arrangement in the stern so the model can be removed from the base.

I'm really looking forward to this buildup. I'm about to decal my 1/2500 RBOP and though it seems kind of a simple ship to make when doing it my way, I admire your ambition to put more into it. Go for the hull plating

Thanks for the comment DefiantClient! I have some ideas for hull plating I found on the web to consider now.

Finished the new metal exhaust nozzles last night...

Unfortunately I discovered the 5/16" OD x .014" thick tubing I bought was too small in diameter when compared to the kit part so I opted to use some 3/8" OD x .035" wall aluminum tubing instead. The .035" wall thickness was too thick though so I ground it down using a grinder and some round files, one of which was diamond coated. I thinned it until the 1/4" OD x .014" tubing I'd bought would fit inside it:

Two rings were cut from the 3/8" tubing and slid on over the 1/4" tubing leaving a small gap between each of them and between the first ring and the metal nozzle. This matched the grooves on the plastic kit nozzles. Not bad, not bad:

The kit nozzle was sawed off and the rear locator pin and socket were removed to allow the aluminum tube to fit into the back of the nacelle. The inner tube is perfect for mounting a 3mm LED inside for lighting:

Next up will be drilling out the windows. I made 3-4 copies of the decal sheet and cut out the bow windows. Here you can see where I used double-sided scotch tape to afix the templates to the bow of the ship as a drilling guide:

I did find a small size H DC power coaxial plug at Radio Shack but oddly enough they did not carry the size H female jack to fit it so I looked online and found a 1.3mm ID plug and jack at All Electronics. They weren't expensive at all but they wanted 8 bucks MINIMUM for shipping so I passed on that. Also their web page, although it had an image of the jack shown, did not give me any dimensions so there was no way to know if it would even fit into the back of the ship. I ended up deciding to go with a male-female power coupler arrangement I'd gotten from Modeler's Brand Hobby Supplies awhile back.

First I had to remove the locator pin and socket from the rear of the upper and lower hull and carve out a slot for the coupelr to pass thru:

Since the plastic of the coupler looked to be vinyl I was worried paint might not stick to it so I left it recessed a little and framed the opening with styrene strip which will take enamel or lacquer based paints:

The male part of the power coupler slides into the stern for a good tight fit. The bottom of the tail fin did have to be filled off a small amount to allow for clearance with the the connector. Mounting the male connector to the brass display stand arm will be a neat trick:

A new curved display arm made from rectangular brass tubing was fashioned to fit the rectangular power connector. A short length of round brass tubing was soldered to the underside to fit into the dome stand and wires were passed up it and out the top of the arm:

In keeping with designations used on blueprints I found on the internet back when I worked on my large AMT BOP, I'm calling the square framed openings observation windows and the round openings sensor ports.
Here's the bow of the ship after drilling out both. I used a pinvise with a micro bit to fit 20 mil diameter fiber. The paper templates worked great, all holes lined up nice and straight:

After drilling out all the round sensor ports and square observation windows in the upper hull (aside from the sensor ports in the cupola itself) I flared the end of some 10 mil fiber optic strand using a BIC lighter and inserted it into one of the holes:

That's it for now. Drilling out the openings in the upper hull cost me another drill bit so hopefully I can finish drilling out all the sensor ports on the cupola with the remaining three bits I have left... Wish me luck!

There are Times, Sir, when men of good Conscience cannot blindly follow orders. You acknowledge their sentience, but ignore their personal liberties and freedoms. Order a man to hand over his child to the state? Not while I"m captain.
- J.L.Picard.